R-r-r-re-do!
A former Rhodes Scholar and thorough tactical planner, Flint personally led half a dozen rescue missions in hostile territories that for obvious reasons of security were never publicized let alone admitted to.
You know, Larry Hama wrote this stuff, but the fiction never really seemed to use much of it. The classic example is the "decisive fast-thinker" Bazooka, but he's not the only one. The cartoon seemed to make Flint the Joe team's second-in-command behind Duke (or third, once Hawk came around), but the idea of him being some kind of "covert rescue" specialist never comes into play, even in the Marvel comics that Larry Hama was writing himself! It's only the new Skybound Entertainment continuity that's made any use of that particular facet of his personality.
I quite liked the original Classified Flint - he was a great example of how a vintage design could be updated, but still be recognizable.
But for whatever reason, the head sculpt just didn't jibe with me, and I can't even explain why; there's just some indefinable element that feels "off" to me when I look at it, no matter how skillfully it was sculpted. I was hoping this Retro Collection version would strike me better, but it appears to be fundamentally the same, if a bit younger and smoother. The same face, anyway: the hair is now parted, instead of being combed back, and the sides aren't shaved.
Even if those changes hadn't been made,
this would still have needed to be a new mold. For whatever reason, Hasbro has made Retro Flint slightly larger than Modern Flint It's not a major difference, just a little more than ⅛", but it's definitely noticable, especially when that initial 2021 figure was a bit taller than the character is stated to be. Size creep is bad on superhero figures, it's bad on Star Wars figures, and it's bad on GI Joe.
The style of the articulation remains the same, though this Flint has a balljointed chest instead of a hinge, and a barbell head instead of a hinge/balljoint. Since he's not wearing an armored vest, he can actually use the chest joint, too.
Flint is wearing his classic uniform colors: black boots, green camouflage pants, black shirt, black beret, green suspenders, and brown gloves. There's a golden parachutist badge on his chest and red stripes
on his shoulders, but those tend to get covered by his suspenders. The red symbol on his beret is a simplified version of the Army Special Forces unit insignia: two arrows crossed over a dagger. It's black on red, rather than being silver, and lacks the "De Oppresso Liber" motto, but the intention is clear. If Hasbro wants to reuse all these new molds sometime soon, they could take a cue from Cover Girl and do him cartoon style: brown camo pants and a green shirt.
Flint's accessories are still a pistol and a shotgun, though they're both more mundane versions than the last figure had. This one gets a direct update of his 1985 backpack, a green bag with a canteen, two grenades, and a couple sticks of dynamite sculpted on it.
The pistol fits in the holster on his right leg, and the shotgun gets green paint apps on the stock and the pump. His beret is larger, and not just because it needs to fit on a bigger head: it flops over to the side more than the first figure's did. The previous Flint came out when Classified was trying to make sure the figures could hold all their accessories at once, which meant no alternate hands or anything, but Retro Flint gets a pair of fists, a pair of hands with the trigger fingers out, a left hand capable of cradling the shotgun, and a pointing right hand.
There's one more thing that needs to be discussed, and while we considered just making it an addendum on the bog, it's important enough to include right here in the body of the review. The art on Flint's card is inexcusably awful. It's ugly, amatuerish, sloppy work, and it appears to be done by A.I. It looks like something a child would do. Hasbro has access to taleted artists like Adam Riches, has access to the original Hector Garrido art from the '80s, and instead what we get is this garbage? If a real person did this, they need to be embarrassed. They need to be ashamed. And if it was, it's possible they are: after all, fans called out this slop when it was revealed at Toy Fair last year, and no human has come forward to defend their work and refute the claims of it being A.I.-generated, so either no human worked on it, or whatever human did work on it isn't brave enough to stand behind their pathetic, childish output.
When Classified started, the packages had beautiful, creative, original art
of the characters. Lately, that's become rote images based specifically on the toy sculpt. How deeply boring. And yet that's still better than using A.I. As if to really drive home how sad and talentless the standard art is, Flint gets a chase variant, limited to only 82 pieces total (in honor of the year Generation 1 started), featuring art by Rich Pellegrino. The art is ugly, but not in a way that's as pejorative as that sounds. It's ugly, but it's ugly with style; it's "ugly" in the way that Simon Bisley's artwork is "ugly"; it's ugly art the way grunge is distorted music: yeah, it's rough, not polished and perfect, but that's the entire point of it. Rich Pellegrino painted a Flint who looks like he would Kool-Aid-Man his way straight through a concrete block wall to take out some Cobras, and that's far, far better than what some resource-guzzling data center can plop out.
Several of the recent Retro Collection releases have just been an excuse to get hard-to-find figures out to more fans, like Dr. Mindbender or the Tele-Viper. But Flint shows exactly what the Retro Collection is all about at its best: taking a character who was previously modernized and well-received, and doing a throwback version instead of just a repaint. The toy itself is great - but the packaging is utter trash.
-- 02/13/26
What kind of idiot thinks A.I. is acceptable? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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